Freeform lens design for providing LED small angle illumination in underwater application

With high light efficiency and long aging life, LED solid-state light source has attracted much attention in underwater application, such as optical communication and imaging. But, the large divergence angle of LED illumination has been a big challenge in practical underwater application, such as the light attenuation in water and then the decreased signal-to-noise ratio. Source-target map is a vital method in illumination optics design, and the focus is to solve numerically differential equations and then construct the freeform surface. To achieve high accuracy freeform surface, an improved method is suggested and optimized through much more advanced and accuracy Runge-Kutta method, which is different from the original design one through Euler method. The designed lens is simulated by ray trace software TracePro, and the simulation results show that the uniformity of 0.8 and the efficacy of 0.6 is obtained. While as, the method is proven to be effective, and also the accuracy of the smooth freeform surface is strengthened. One designed illumination lens is fabricated by computer numeric control (CNC) machine to demonstrate the design experimentally.